What I can love about the RC church

Andrew Sullivan reflects on what it might signal that the Pope rides the bus, and in his reflection captures what also attracts me about the parishes I’ve been a part of:

This is one reason I love Catholicism: its human and cultural catholicity. The parishes I’m drawn toward are sprawling, diverse, different congregations. I never wanted to go to a gay mass, although I respect those who choose to. For me, it was the lack of uniformity that grabbed me. To walk to communion behind a student or a construction worker or a Latino immigrant or a pregnant mother or a gay senior or an old lady in a veil is to experience the sheer, glorious wounded mess of humanity – walking to be healed by the Body of Christ. I deeply believe this is integral to Christianity – a lack of hierarchy, an insistence that what the world elevates is not what matters, that the first shall be last, and the last first. Letting go of the notion that you are worth more or less than anyone else, accepting your physical fate as dust, and embracing humanity without borders or labels – as the Samaritan did in the parable, as Francis did with lepers, as Mychal Judge and Jorge Bergoglio did in washing the feet of people with AIDS – this is Christianity.